Reciprocal linking penalty?
-
Hey,
I have a site with a possible excessive reciprocal linking penalty. It has had a -50 penalty since October. I sent a reconsideration request in December but there has been no change.
I actually dumped all the recip links from my site back in 2009, but there were thousands of them - it really was an excessive campaign that went on for years.
Would it be worth it to try and have the recip links removed, like what people do with a paid links penalty? I can get the email addresses of most of these sites but it will be a huge undertaking.
I haven't done anything else wrong with this site, but it does have a content problem that I've been working on. It was hit by the very first round of Panda, but I was working that out up until the penalty in October.
What would you do?
-
No problem, Hope it turns out well for you.
-
Oh good ideas, thank you so much!
-
My thinking is that during this time you would have rehabbed the main site enough that it might not be penalized but also might not be as strong as your new site with a squeaky clean profile. So my thinking is that it wouldn't hurt. Now if you didn't rehab the main site and did a 301 then I do think it might hurt your new site. I hope this helps in your decision. Good luck and keep me posted on how it goes.
-
Thank you for your ideas - the only thing that worries me is 301ing a penalized domain to a new site.
Is it possible that the penalty could transfer you think? I've heard both that it does and doesn't.
-
You might want to consider doing both at the same time. Rehab your main site while you simultaneously build a new site. My thinking is hypothetical here but I believe it is worth a shot. What happens if you keep your main site and try to rehab but nothing ever fixes it because so much damage has been done? Or what happens if you dump that site to start a new one and it takes you years to get to where you once were, or possibly you could lose so much ground to others that you might never catch up. Now by doing a simultaneous site campaign you can give yourself 6 months to a year of hard work on both to see which one has the best results and then reassess your situation. Now this only works by not interlinking your sites. Google will think you are trying to game them instead of your real goal of having a clean link profile with a legit site. Once the test is done and you've determined which site is the strongest you can then 301 redirect one to the other. Just a thought.
-
Okay. Thank you for the advice!
-
I agree, starting from scratch would be a quicker and easier option. However, by doing this the authority and value that has been built up on the domain will be lost. Ultimately I think it would be better in the long run to clean up the current site.
-
Thanks, I'm thinking about it, but this site is almost 14 years old and has a number of good links from libraries and universities...
I'm totally willing to try and contact all the sites I exchanged links with - but is that a dumb idea?
-
Yes if I were in your position I would contact all the sites that you created reciprocal links with and have them remove your link from their sites. It is not enough to just remove their links from your site. Once you have done this you can then concentrate on gaining good quality links to replace the links you've had removed.
Finally, you can prepare you reconsideration request to Google. Check this link for tips from Google on how to prepare your request:
Tips on requesting reconsideration
Adam
-
Is it going to take longer to clean the site up than to start a new one?
If so, I'd bite the bullet and start a new one.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Refferal links
I have a site where I can pick up where my hits came from. So if somebody clicks from another website link to visit my website, I will then pick up from which website they came from and also which page they landed on. Will google penalize me for this and see this as paid advertising?
Link Building | | Heinwest0 -
Sitewide links
Hi there, We operate about a dozen websites that are part of the same parent company. All these websites are in the same vertical, and link among each other in the footer section. The anchor for each link is the brand name, so we are merely doing it to show what other products the parent company has to offer. My question is: do you think this is still advisable, or it might trigger a penalty? Also, what would you choose between: Sitewide footer links from each site to the other sites. A single footer link on the homepage from each site to the other sites. A presentation page on each website, one click away from the homepage, which presents the company's other websites. Thanks.
Link Building | | propertyshark0 -
Links from sites with iffy link profiles?
So the site http://www.cadenas.de/ appears to have good decent scores from the various Moz ranks, but when I check out the site in OSE there are a lot of really sketchy links that jump out, online pharmacy/drug type links. I should also add that the negative links are seemingly going to a weird blog deep in the site and only appear when I select all links to the root domain in OSE. Everything about the site appears very legitimate except for the link profile which has me nervous. Would you guys pursue a link from this site?
Link Building | | CJ50 -
Remove links after Penguin?
My site did not get hit. I am worried that Google will come back and get me for those anchor-text links I built a while back. They are of low to medium quality guest posts. Should I remove my old low-quality links? What about those on sites and pages that have been deindexed by Google? Any point in removing those? I know we can only speculate at this point, but would really appreciate some opinions on this. Has the trend in the past been a slight rollback after a big algorithm update like this? Or could we expect to see more and more sites being penalized? -Mathias
Link Building | | mathiasppc0 -
Google notice of unnatural links - no penalty
my site just received this warning on 3/18. I haven't seen any rankings drop or anything... i don't know why i got this as i really don't build links in a frowned upon way. Anyone know if you get penalized for this, and if so, how long after you get the message does the penalty kick in, and what is the penalty.... Also, if i gave you guys my domain name do you think you'd be able to tell which links would cause this message? thanks
Link Building | | Prime850 -
Whats with these links
I have a competitor
Link Building | | AlanMosley
that has shot up lately taking number one spot for various keywords when I look
at his links in Open Site Explorer I find many links that are links to downloadable
objects, not web pages. A few
examples, if you click on them, do not open who knows what they are. But what
the story, how are these links to his site, anyone know anything about this. Thanks http://wolfet.co.uk/etmain/mitchelldown.pk3 http://www2.dupont.com/Tyvek_Weatherization/en_US/assets/downloads/cad_fluidapplied/FA-S-201.dwg?Action=livre_or&start=24750&forum=alainfrancois http://mobile.earthcam.com/download/EarthCam%20Mobile%20v4.0.msi?faq&page=39560 -
Link building and directory links to a new site
I have three new sites all hosted on the same server in the same public html folder and each site is in a different folder inside the public html folder. These sites are a listing of live music venues in different cities in Texas. Should I link these sites together to increase page rank to each other and also put key search phrases in the anchor text and place these links in the text in the center of each page of each site to make the links more effective? Also, because the sites are about a year old they don't have many inlinks yet. If i submit them to about 50 directories will Google not like this because there are way more directory links than natural links? I've been told that it is trouble to have more than about 50% directory links compared to natural links. Thanks in advance for your answers! Take care,
Link Building | | Ron10
Ron0 -
Link Farming
Are link farms still bad? I still am not sure about this question. I know that some people still do link farms. If they are bad, wouldn't a directory be considered a link farm? For instance I can get my site on a .EDU, but it will just be a list of links. Is that bad?
Link Building | | blackrino0